Texans pull another rabbit outta their hats in overtime

Dan offered up his insights of the last couple of torturous wins by the hometown squad, and I have a few thoughts of my own.

The Texans are 2-0 in comeback fashion after two hard fought come from behind victories. I’m very proud of the grit and determination our Texans have shown, but a tad bit concerned that the had to pull a proverbial rabbit out of their helmets in both games.

After allowing the Chargers to take a commanding lead in the first 35 or so minutes of the season opener, they let the Titans, a division opponent at home, take a decent lead on them in the home opener.

Don’t get me wrong here, okay folks? I’ll take any “W” we can get, but going into the future one has to ask if this is what we should expect each and every week. Because if the answer is yes, I can assure you there’s going to be plenty of games where we don’t pull out the come from behind miracle. Surely we can dominate some of the upcoming games from start to finish, right? We need to be the team taking a lead into the final minutes at some point or we can dash any playoff hopes.

So what’s the answer? Well, there’s a few things that I’ve seen that have killed drives that concerns me. My main concern is Schaub’s continuing trend of throwing the ball low and away. He’s consistently throwing balls behind his receivers, or throwing it at their feet. This has to stop. I’m not even talking about the scrambling throws. I’m talking about almost all of them. This has got to stop. When we’re facing a 3rd and 7 and he throws a 5 yard dump pass, he has got to hit the receiver in stride so they can get those yards after the catch and the first down. By making them stop or turn around for the ball it kills their momentum and gives the defenders time to make a stop. I’ve watched this happen too many times over the past two games and frankly, it has me quite concerned. I haven’t seen many drops that I can blame flat out on the receivers. The talent around Schaub is making him look very good, when in reality they’re making some superb catches. I don’t know how we fix this, it isn’t the first time it’s been discussed.

Then we have the great big question of Randy Bullock. It’s my opinion we’re again settling for field goals when we shouldn’t have to. We have the weapons to score TD’s. But having said that, when Bullock’s number is called, he’s got to deliver. Currently he’s making a paltry 20% of his field goal tries. He’s 1 of 5 in two games. That has him on pace to make 8 whole field goals out of 40 tries. Now we all know that’s not going to be the end number, because either he starts making kicks or the coaches and management are going to have to make some tough decisions. I’m ready for them to bring in someone else to try out right now. 1 of 5 is flat out unacceptable. And I don’t understand the problem, because we’ve seen the kid kick better than that in pre-season. That’s got to be fixed. We have to be able to count on our kicker. ‘Nuff said.

With the exception of the first half of the Chargers game, which they played without Antonio Smith, I can’t really fault our defense. They’ve played outstanding when we needed them to and come up with big plays when called upon. They haven’t drawn a lot of penalties and despite my early groaning, Shiloh Keo has actually held his own. Our line is getting pressure and our linebackers are playing outstanding. All in all I think our defense is going to be fine. I’d like to see Ed Reed get on the field, but I’m not pinning my hopes on him making a huge impact. I still think he’ll be an obvious upgrade but how much of an impact he will make remains to be seen.

Overall I’m still very proud of our Texans. They never gave up and they showed a lot of heart in both wins. I just want to see them take it to their opponents from start to finish like the dominating team we know they can be. We have the weapons on both sides of the ball. Andre Johnson has been his usual awesome self. DeAndre Hopkins has been outstanding. The Foster/Tate one-two punch has been effective. JJ Watt and Brian Cushing continue to prove why they’re the leaders on defense. Let’s just hope these first few games were motivation enough to push them to the next level.

~ Crimedog

Now for Dan’s comments:

What Next for the Houdinis of Houston?

Towards the end of “A League of Our own” after the climactic final game of the 1940’s girl baseball playoffs the announcer says,

“Take me home momma and put me to bed. I have seen enough to know I have seen too much.”

That is how I felt at the end of the second of two improbable opening season wins by our Houston Texans, who if they were felines would be down to 7 or less lives at this point in the season. After getting mowed down in the first half and change of the San Diego game, our hometown heroes waited even longer to pull this latest miracle win out of the fire.

Against the Chargers the defense was a major culprit along with the offense in digging a hole for the team to climb out of – but this Sunday was much more on the offense that could not finish drives and gave the Titans a freebie pick six on an errant throw due to an errant pass route. The errant toe of rookie kicker Randy Bullock had not helped things though he did miss on two long ones of 50 yards during the earlier part of the game.

Heading into the last 3 minutes of the game, down eight and with a bad track history in crucial comebacks, Matt Schaub marched the Texans to a quick six of their own thanks to some great help from the TEs Graham and Daniels and an overturned review of what turned out to be injured Andre Johnson’s last play of the day. Arian Foster grunted it out to score the TD and to reach as far as he could for the tying 2 point conversion.

Then the craziness started. The Texans defense continued to be stout and stopped the Titans – getting the ball back for Schaub and company with less than a minute left. They then deftly moved it down field thanks mostly to a big run and catch by Keshawn Martin.

And then Randy Bullock (thanks to the icing tactics and one off-sides penalty) was able to do 4 of the things kickers can do – all in one 5 second time period. He made his kick (after time was called), had it blocked (by an off-sides defender), missed one (after time was called) and hit the upright. I’m betting none of us have ever or will ever see a kicker make 4 attempts in a single series again.

But the Texans save the best for last – moving the ball quickly down the field in overtime, by air and by ground. The Texans did not have Andre Johnson – but they did not seem to care. A new hero named Hopkins – got them down to the lip of the goal line and then after a stuffed Foster running play, he tried to catch one in the left corner of the end zone in front of an unfortunately visually challenged referee who could not (would not?) see the DB holding Hopkins’ jersey. It did not matter as Hopkins went to the other side and caught a perfect fade pass with an iron grip and after another 5 minutes (it seemed) of review – won the game.

We’ve never seen two wins like this in a row for the Texans in their short time here, and our hearts are hoping for something easier next week. Take me home momma indeed.